After Hours
by Clairose
Summary: Prequel to States of Flux. Following the Reverse Flash's attack on STAR labs, Wells is rushed to the ER in critical condition. But he doesn't remain that way for long, and ends up finally being surprised by the future. Post 1x09. Spoilers. Wells/OC. Complete.


Sooooo, I really shouldn't be starting this. But, I'm on winter break from school and, while I love Barry's puppy dog eyes and Cait's take-no-shit attitude, I find myself wanting to learn more and more about Wells and his ulterior motives. Bear in mind, I know very little from the comics, and this is going to be told from an outsider's perspective. One shot for now, let me know if you'd like to see more :)

For readers of _Bravua_, if you guys are still out there, I am working on the next update!

**Edited to add:** Sequel is now posted, titled _States of Flux_. Check it out!

X X X

After Hours

X X X

_One Year Ago_

The pediatric floor of Central City Hospital was remarkably silent. Even after patients had given in to sleep, there was always some activity at the nurse's station, in the halls as parents slipped away to grab a late dinner or catch their breath in the courtyard that the floor looked out onto - if they weren't slumbering in their kids' rooms, which was where she found them most of the time during her evening rounds. It was a peaceful, green reprieve from the grey, sterile halls. And come morning, she was one of the first to greet her patients when they woke up. That was the favorite part of her shift.

She preferred working nights, even though she probably could have switched to days or swing if she wanted. Glowing recommendations, high-profile references, top of her class. . .there was certainly an adjustment period when she first moved, but she dealt with it. Central City was a clean slate for her, and she didn't mind her quiet shifts. Very rarely was she called to assist as a trauma nurse in the ER because of her past experience. It had only happened once in the two months she'd been working at the hospital: a seven car pile up on the highway had ambulances overflowing into the emergency bay. It hadn't been her first double shift, but it was a very long one. They didn't save everybody.

"Wendy!"

Jumping slightly at the sound of her name, Wendy turned away from the courtyard to see Nora ushering her from just down the hall. She glanced at her watch - quarter to seven - as she walked towards the older woman at the nurse's station, her shift partner for the majority of the days she worked.

Nora pointed at the small wall-mounted TV in the upper corner of the wall, turning up the volume. Squinting at the ticker tape rolling at the bottom of the screen, Wendy made a mental note to make an appointment with an optometrist again. She really needed glasses.

"They're about to turn it on!" Nora said excitedly, nudging Wendy in the arm. "Can you believe it? First one in the country. I think Germany is still working on their prototype."

Wendy smiled reflexively at her enthusiasm. She rarely watched the news anymore, having recently opted out of setting up cable at her new apartment. She never left a shift without having been updated by Nora, however.

"What're we talking about here?" Wendy asked, glancing back up at the TV screen. A well-coiffed reporter seemed to be spouting a laundry list of facts regarding the event about to happen at a place called STAR Labs-

Why did that name sound so familiar to her?

"The particle accelerator," Nora answered, pointing animatedly with the remote. "Elliott has been talking about it for _weeks._ He's there tonight."

Elliott, her husband. He worked in computer science, but Wendy remembered Nora telling her that he was in the middle of completing his master's in advanced technology of - something that sounded incredibly complicated.

"Particle accelerator? That sounds like something out of a comic," Wendy remarked, curious, yet somewhat skeptical. She had a tremendous amount of respect for those that devoted their lives to the field of science - but her passion was medicine, not physics. The few physics courses she had to take for school were interesting, and she did well in them, but that was the end of her study of the subject.

A countdown was commencing on the screen now.

"One minute to go!" Nora said, just as one of their patient monitors started beeping.

Wendy walked over to the counter where several computer screens were lined up against the wall, and leaned down to silence the alarm. "It's 33, low pulse ox," she said.

Nora sighed. "That poor girl. I read she's been up and down all day." She glanced at the TV again: thirty more seconds.

"You stay, I'll check on her," Wendy offered.

"Oh! Thanks, hun," Nora said, smiling. "I owe you one."

"Anytime," Wendy called over her shoulder as she made her way to Room 33. She could hear cheering echo down from the nurse's station. Apparently, the accelerator was now turned on. She'd have to ask Nora what exactly it was going to be used for, and who built it. Maybe she'd Google it when she got home - if she remembered. She usually didn't last more than twenty minutes before crashing when she made it off shift.

Wendy knocked softly on 33 and slowly pushed the heavy door open. The lights were dimmed, and her patient lay in her bed, eyes glued to the TV across her hospital room: Audrey Stanton was made of bird bones but that didn't stop her from being the spunkiest seven-year-old Wendy had met in a long time. Even her illness couldn't take that away from her.

"Hey, Audrey," Wendy greeted, smiling down at the girl, and silencing her beeping monitor. "How're we feelin' tonight?"

Audrey made a face, blowing out a quick huff of air. "Like crap," she answered, then her eyes widened, and she glanced at the door, as if expecting her mother to pop out from behind it and chastise her. "Please don't tell Mom I said that."

Wendy chuckled, logging in to the wall-mounted computer beside Audrey's bed. "Secret's safe with me."

After charting the drop in pulse ox, Wendy paused, studying the monitor hooked up to Audrey's pulse, biting her lip. She looked back down at her patient, whose eyes had migrated back to the TV. Her stats were steady at 96 again, but if she'd been dipping up and down all day. . .

"Have you had trouble breathing, Audrey? Any headaches?" Wendy asked.

"Nope and nope," the girl answered, matter-of-fact. "I'm kinda thirsty, though."

Wendy nodded. "That I _can_ help you with," she said. Dehydration was to be expected with the recovery from the latest round of chemotherapy. After charting the notes in the computer, she walked over to the sink below the TV and poured Audrey a glass of water.

"Thanks," Audrey said, taking a few big gulps before setting it down. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the one that wasn't butterfly clipped with an IV, and asked, "Have you ever been to STAR Labs?"

Wendy glanced up at the TV, shaking her head. Was everyone in the country watching this event on their screens at home? Everything seemed to be going well, the large foyer of a modern-looking building was filled to the brim with bodies dressed in formal attire, reporters hanging around the edges of the screen. A man in glasses (she really needed to make that appointment!) dressed in a three piece suit was addressing the audience from a raised podium, flashes going off at left and right.

"I wanna go!" Audrey confessed, her voice hushed but full of excitement. "It looks _so_ cool. I heard you can go on tours - for free! Especially for kids like me."

She said this all matter-of-fact, like most seven-year-olds said things, but it still made Wendy inwardly wince. Audrey's life had gone from soccer games and sleepovers to a gut-wrenching battle following a routine physical with her pediatrician. And now, two years later, she was still fighting to be cancer free.

"I'm sure all it would take is a smile and a wink and they'd let you in," Wendy told the girl, encouraging. "Speaking of winks, why don't I let you get some rest and I'll come back. . ."

She trailed off as a gleam outside the window to her right caught her eye. The entire hospital overlooked the greater metropolitan area, but it was a bright, orange light across town that made her pause. She could have sworn the night skies were clear when she pulled into the hospital parking garage a half hour ago, but now, as she walked towards the window, the sky looked clouded and. . .was that a _storm_ forming in the distance? How could one come together that quickly? She was no meteorologist, but even that seemed odd to her.

"Wendy?" She heard Audrey call from her bed. "What's that light?"

Wendy took another step towards the window as the light grew brighter and brighter. She could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up on end, and she held her breath until suddenly a crackling dome of light and - lightning, it was actually _lightning_ \- was shooting up over the city. Wendy's heart sunk and she gasped. Behind her, Audrey called her name again, her voice wavering in fear. Storm clouds began to swirl against the yellow orange-lit sky.

Suddenly, the storm flared outward towards them and she heard Audrey scream from behind her. The ragged sound snapped Wendy from her stupor, and she whipped around and bent over the small girl and wrapped her arms around her tight, shielding her from the window. She had never prayed for anything much in her life, but she found herself wishing she had then.

"Close your eyes," Wendy said, just as she began to feel the room shake.

X X X

_Present Day_

"Bradycardic male, early 40s, blunt force trauma to the chest and abdomen, lacerations to the head and face-"

Wendy turned as two paramedics wheeled a patient through one of the side emergency bays. Another nurse - Jamie - was already matching pace with them as one paramedic continued to list signs, symptoms and treatment administered. Evenings were always the busiest in the ER, and tonight was no exception.

Jamie spotted her, and nodded towards an empty exam area. Wendy swung a side curtain open, grabbing the banana bag IV from one of the paramedics as he handed it to her.

"BP's fifty over thirty," he said as he locked the gurney and began connecting up the patient's pulse monitor to the machines in the exam area. "Guy got the shit beat outta him. He crashed once on the way here."

As the other nurse started vitals, Wendy glanced down at the unconscious patient. Even underneath all the blood, she could see the sallow color of his skin, eyelids fluttering. She looked down at his hands: trembling slightly. Shallow breathing.

Something in her head clicked.

"He's about to go tachy," she told Jamie as the paramedics stepped back to give them space.

"What? Wendy, he's stable, we just need to get his BP up-" Jamie cut in.

Wendy looked at one of the paramedics. "Crash cart, over there," she nodded to an exam area across the way.

The paramedic paused, looking between her and Jamie, who remained silent.

"Now!" Wendy said urgently, pulling the stethoscope from around her neck and pressing it to the man's exposed chest. His heart was racing, and he was barely breathing. She pulled at the sides of his shirt, cut up the middle by the paramedics in transit, found a space on his side between his ribs, just over his lungs, and pressed: the man groaned, and she heard slight gurgling as well, though he still remained unconscious.

"Wendy, what are you-" She heard Jamie start.

"His heart's not the problem, he's not getting enough air," she said, turning to the supply cart beside the bed and pulling open the second drawer for what she needed next. "What was his pulse ox on the way here?" She called over her shoulder.

"Ninety-three when we first got to him, but it was dropping," she heard the paramedic answer her.

Grabbing a packaged chest tube and sterilization kit, Wendy was about to swab the area over his ribs when hands shot out to stop her.

"What do you think you're doing? You can't do a chest tube," Jamie told her. "You're not a doctor anymore-"

The heart rate monitor went off just before Jamie could finish her sentence, and all eyes shot to the screen for a moment. Fifty-five beats per minute, forty-seven beats, thirty-two. . .

"Shit," Jamie breathed, looking around them. "Where the hell is Dr. Morrison?" It was nearly impossible to find a spare doctor when they were this busy, and usually the monitor going off would alert them that they needed another hand on deck. Morrison was the lead on shift, but she didn't have time to wait. Her patient was going to drown in his own blood if she didn't do something quick.

"You can tell him you tried to stop me," Wendy said, turning back to the man on the gurney.

After sterilizing the area, she grabbed a scalpel and made an inch long incision between the third and fourth rib. She gently but quickly inserted about an inch and a half of the plastic tube into the incision. After a few quick beats, blood began to trickle out of the tube. Her eyes went to the man's face, who simultaneously sucked in a slow, shallow breath as the pressure was relieved inside his chest.

"He had a hemothorax?" One of the paramedics said from behind her. He sounded equal parts stunned and intrigued.

Wendy nodded, but didn't take her eyes off the man until his breathing normalized. She'd done hundreds of these insertions during her trauma rotations. But that had been in Starling City.

When she looked up, Jamie was watching her with a mix of annoyance and anger. "They're going to write you up for this," she told her.

Ignoring the comment, Wendy glanced at the heart rate monitor, which was slowly climbing back up to a stable fifty-eight beats per minute. Jamie walked away with one of the paramedics, while the other stayed behind, watching her as she carefully secured the tube in place with medical tape, and placed a plastic collection tray just below the insertion.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to see the paramedic watching her with appraising eyes. He nodded to her in appreciation, then turned and headed to where his partner was checking the patient in with the ER clerk.

Wendy looked back down at her patient and, now that the immediate danger had been neutralized, she finally recognized who it was she had been treating, the man she had broken hospital code for:

Former director of STAR Labs. Inventor of the failed particle accelerator.

Dr. Harrison Wells.

X X X

It was sometime around five in the morning when Wendy finally caught a lull in her shift, and she quickly made her escape to the break room for coffee before continuing rounds on the floor. Rush hour in the ER had passed, but she was still on edge, going over and over in her head the chest tube insertion she'd performed earlier. She wasn't looking forward to being written up but, given the circumstances, there had been no way around it. She would stand by her decision when the reprimand came, even though it contradicted her reasons for switching careers in the first place. Saving patients was second nature to her, she just needed to give herself some time. She appreciated her position at Central City Hospital, and she didn't want to compromise it.

She would adjust. Not everyone was cut out to make it as a doctor long-term, after all.

After filling a disposable cup with coffee and adding a few sugars, Wendy checked with the ER clerk about where her earlier patient had been transferred after being stabilized. The clerk had arched an eyebrow at her - apparently, news of her little unauthorized operation had made its way around the department - but gave her the information without further comment.

When she arrived on the fourth floor, she gulped the rest of her coffee and tossed it before making her way towards Room 4122. She had expected the door to be closed, for her patient to still be unconscious and recovering from the trauma he'd sustained. . .what she hadn't expected, however, was a wide open door and him working on a laptop.

How did he even _get_ a laptop that quickly? And why had the attending thought he was even _well_ enough to work? He was in full hospital garb now, his hair slightly tamer, lacerations bandaged. He looked up at her as she walked in, a pleasant, if slightly perplexing half-smile, on his face.

"Ms. Blaine, isn't it?" He greeted her, setting his laptop onto the bedside table.

And _how _had he learned her last name before she'd even introduced herself? The confusion must've shown on her face, because he quickly added, "Jake was kind enough to fill me in on what happened after I was brought here."

Jake, as in Jacob Morrison, head doctor on shift in the ER. He was on a first name basis with one of the hospital's most esteemed trauma doctors.

Of course he was. He was Harrison Wells.

"How are you feeling?" Wendy asked, walking into the room to stand at his bedside. She glanced at his side, where she assumed his chest had been bandaged and wrapped following surgery to repair any damage or infection she may have caused during the insertion. Aseptic technique only provided so much protection.

"Quite well, all things considered," he answered, and nodded to her. "Thanks to you."

Wendy smiled and looked down, slightly self-conscious. As a doctor, she was never very good at accepting compliments. Even more so now that she was a nurse.

"I did what had to be done," she replied.

Wells cocked his head to the side, a half-smile on his face again. "That's an interesting choice of words, Ms. Blaine."

"Wendy, please," she amended. She was caught off guard at how well he was responding to her, how coherent he seemed to be. Quite a recovery indeed for less than twelve hours after being admitted to the ER. . .

"Wendy," he nodded, trying out the name. "I'm Harrison," he returned.

His eyes were a bright shade of blue, slightly crinkled around the edges. She had seen him on the news intermittently over the last several months, paralyzed from the waist down after the accident. He was still a renowned physicist but, beyond his work at STAR Labs, she knew little else about him. Rather enigmatic, she thought.

She realized belatedly that she was staring, and glanced at the monitors to break eye contact and buy herself time to respond.

"Anyway," she said, shaking her head in a quick motion, as if to clear it. "I was just making rounds. I'm glad to see you're okay."

He smiled again, and she wondered if he sensed her nervousness, nodding. "That I am, yes. That I am. It's not every day you meet the stranger who saved your life."

There seemed to be an ironic edge to his tone, and it was Wendy's turn to be perplexed again, but she decided not to comment further on it. Instead, she just smiled and wished him luck. She didn't see his eyes following her out of her room, or the curious look that remained on his face after she had gone.

But she did remember his eyes, and how clearly blue they were.

X X X

STAR Labs was unusually quiet that evening, Wells having decided to give Team Flash - as Cisco had come to call them - the night off in the wake of the attack by the Reverse Flash. Leaving the main lab, Wells continued down the hall in his wheelchair until he came to the hidden chamber, one of many he'd drawn up when brainstorming the labyrinthine design of the building. After the walls opened up to envelop him, he stopped the chair and stood, approaching Gideon with slow, measured steps. It was always a little jarring, the simple act of walking after hours of sitting. He really needed to design some muscular neurotransmitters to keep his legs stimulated just enough so they didn't _truly_ start to atrophy.

"Hello, Gideon," Wells greeted the holographic program as it booted up before his eyes without needing to be asked.

"Hello, Dr. Wells," the machine answered back in its feminine voice. "Would you like to start another journal entry?"

"Not today," Wells commented, eyes glancing to the left where the Reverse Flash's suit sat embedded in its case. He had learned enough for the time being about Barry's progress. "I need you to find someone for me. Someone I didn't see coming."

"First and last name?" Gideon requested.

"Wendy Blaine," Wells replied, remembering the nurse's deep auburn hair and smile. She hadn't always been a nurse, having all but abandoned a promising career as a level one trauma doctor in Starling City - another reason that had intrigued about her future.

After a few moments, Gideon pulled up a multitude of documents, magnifying each as she listed off results.

"Last known records of Wendy Ellen Blaine are approximately five years from now. Marriage certificate and legal name change documents registered in Central City County to Wendy Ellen Wells, dated June 13th, 2019. Married to Dr. Harrison George Wells on June 15th, 2019."

Wells blinked, his mouth dropping slightly open.

"What-"


End file.
